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At Thanksgiving dinner several people were in a group talking. As I joined them, they were saying things like, "You know, running is my drug." "Oh, for me, food is my drug." "Oh, for me it's sex." Then they looked over at me.

"You know, I'm a very straightforward man, and for me, it's been quite enough to have drugs be my drug."

I listen to CBS News Radio when driving. Every half hour they give the financial news. Over years, I've noticed that the only stock index for which an absolute index is ever given is the Dow: "The Dow was down 25 points to 10,420. The NASDQ fell 10 points, and the S&P was down 5."

I swear, you could spend a decade listening to their reports and you could make a chart of the NASDAQ and S&P moves over that period, but you'd never know what their actual level is.

I noticed today on my bag of garden soil a warning that reads "Keep out of reach of children." OK, let's set aside the question of why dirt needs to be kept out of the reach of children, and ask instead how, given that I'm going to be putting this stuff on the ground, am I supposed to keep it "out of children's reach"?

First of all, as "evidence" that the swine-flu vaccine is toxic, Grigg links to... a peer-reviewed journal article? A large study showing the danger of the vaccine? No, he links to.. another crank writing on the Internet! In fact, there is apparently widespread scientific consensus that the vaccine is (relatively) safe. (All medical treatment carries risks! The relevant question is: Are the risks greater than the rewards?)

Secondly, "at gunpoint"! The article Grigg cites never even mentions if the deputies involved were armed, but certainly if they had drawn their weapons this would be mentioned. So this was certainly not done "at gunpoint" -- but boy, it makes a more dramatic headline to put in that lie, doesn't it?

Next, Grigg calls the child an "inmate." What horseshit. All three of my kids go to public schools, and you know what? Any day I want, I can k…

"If afterburn were found to exist, it would suggest that even if you replaced the calories you used during an exercise session, you should lose weight, without gaining weight — the proverbial free lunch."

I do believe if you lose weight, you inevitably will not have gained weight.

1.2. By an unfolding sequence, we mean a sequence derived from an initial string (or digit) by repeatedly applying a production which appends to the sequence thus far a specific transform of the sequence thus far. Let f be a string function. If s is a string in the domain of f, &f denotes the function &f(s) ≡ sf(s). The unfolding sequence derived from function f and initial string s in the domain of f is U=&f^∞(s). Trivially, any sequence can in fact be seen as unfolding by a sufficiently perverse choice of f:f(d(0)d(1)...d(i)) ≡ d(i+1), 0 ≤ i < ∞. We shall simply ignore this, looking at sequences that can usefully be defined by unfolding processes.